Friends
by zorrie
Summary: Friends don't give friends mixed signals. It's beginning to get on Matt's nerves. Matt/Mello, unrequited. Or is it?


I'm back from the dead! Yeah. My laptop crashed, and needed a new hard drive... thank goodness I had plenty of things stored on a jump drive. Anywho, have some strange little fic I came up with at about 3am :)

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"Matt. What part of 'not gay' don't you understand?"

I paused. "The part where you look at me like that."

I'd gotten to him now. Oh, was it great. Mello's not exactly unflappable, but his eye twitched. I swear it did. "Like what?"

Ah, the righteous indignation! I'd almost forgotten why I loved him so much. In a totally platonic way, of course. Of course.

Not really. Which… was kind of the problem.

"Well," I began, drawing the vowel out. I walked over to where he sat on the futon. Cheap little thing (the futon, not Mello), but it served its purpose. Place to crash when there was company (like Mello. Yes, I take the futon and he takes the bed. …fuck off), place to watch TV from (you'd think I could afford a couch, but I needed to eat more than I needed a couch – money has to come from somewhere, and you think I'd pull from my videogame fund? Hah) and most importantly at the moment, place for Mello to sit so that I could loom over him. One inch shorter, I'm always looking up at him, up into those stupid smirking crazy blue eyes.

One inch, you say, one inch can't be that bad. But it is. Mello makes it seem like a foot, that tiny inch, until I feel like an ant he can squish under his boot. I'd even venture so far as to say the feeling is mutual, judging by the way Mello taps his foot when he's particularly exasperated with me. Like now. Tap, tap, tap _tap_. I bet he was imagining how he'd like to squish me under his boot. Or stomp. Mello's more of a vicious stomper. I guess I'm more of a squisher.

So I loomed, and I loomed with pleasure.

Is that even a word? Loomed. Eh. Mello rolled his eyes heavenward and managed to frown and yet smirk, a talent I am constantly in awe of. I glared at him for that, and he stared right back. We stared at one another until I began to get that tingly feeling, and had to look away.

"See? You're doing it now!"

"Doing what?" Mello was getting annoyed. Good. Let him. That's what he got, for messing with my head like that.

"You… _you_," I said, eloquently, hoping my facial expressions spoke for themselves. Yeah, my face was running the gamut: I swung between anger and exasperation and a rather embarrassing hopefulness, as though I couldn't decide which one to be. Finally I settled on giving Mello the Look. As a youth I had practiced it for hours in the mirror, until I was satisfied I had mastered the single raised eyebrow, the snarly sort of smile, the general air of imperiousness.

I gave Mello the Look, hoping he would psychically sense that I really didn't want to be arguing passionately with him. Other activities involving passion, I would love to, but not arguing. It didn't seem like I was getting either wish.

Mello rose. Thanks to my previous looming position, we were now about a literal hair's breadth apart. And I was eye-to-eye with his nose, again. Not that it isn't a nice nose, because it is. I simply detest needing to tilt my chin up to look at him. It makes me feel so damn ridiculous.

Our proximity seemed to dawn on Mello as well, because the next thing he said was "Matt, if you try to cop a feel, I will knee you."

I tried to tell myself he was jokingly referencing a few previous attempts on my part, when there had still been just enough ambiguity on _someone_ _else's_ part to lead me on. Cough. Mello. Cough. Things ended messily. A bloody nose and some good bruises later, I nursed my wounded pride as Mello shouted "Do I have to write 'No, Matt, I don't want to sleep with you' on my forehead for fuck's sake? Because that's what I'll do!"

He didn't have to be so dramatic about it. I was only putting two and two together. Mello, the prettiest boy ever seen at Whammy's, albeit also the snarkiest and most likely to seriously hurt you, transformed into this beautifully lethal creature and pulling at my heartstrings, standing on my doorstep. Okay, dumped. Hired heavies or something, I suppose, because there's no way he crawled there on his own – half his face mummified in sloppy bandaging, and his shoulder, and his side – but still, _Mello_ at my door. 'Course then there was the hospital visit, a supremely awkward procedure when I couldn't very well explain "I haven't seen him in a few years, but my doorbell rings and what do you know? He's lying there, bleeding on my doorstep. Fix him up so I can beat the shit out of him, please?"

I honestly intended to do just that. Beat the shit out of him, because he had no right to run off like that and leave me in the god damn orphanage alone. No right.

Then I saw him stitched up with IV drips and tubes out his nose, and I just wanted to hug him. I know it sounds stupid, don't laugh. It isn't as though I ever got that far – even ravaged by unexplained burns and half-conscious in a tacky hospital gown, Mello radiated prickliness. Maybe that's not the most dignified term, and there are a thousand more apt adjectives, but what I thought of was prickliness. And fuck me if that didn't make me want to hug him more.

Are you beginning to see what I mean? Mello has a _look_, this expression that makes you want to ignore your sensibilities and jump his bones. If cute kittens were ever cruelly sadistic, in a totally sexy way, you would have Mello. Which makes no sense at all. But there you go – these things cannot be explained. They simply are.

So, I attempted to delude myself into believing Mello had meant his remark in good-natured jest. I smiled uneasily. I raised my hands up, palms facing forward as though I were being accosted. 'See?' they said. 'Not copping a feel.'

Mello only shook his head. I knew what was coming. Go fuck off and get back to work, Matt. Be useful, Matt. Stop wasting your time when there's too much to do. We still have to catch Kira, Matt. Get laid because you're embarrassing me, Matt.

"I'm sorry, Matt."

Wait – what?

My disbelief must've showed on my face. Whoops.

"What, do you think I get a kick out of practically fending you off at every corner? You're my friend. I trust you, somewhat, and I respect you. I even think I don't mind you, occasionally. But that's where it ends."

Gee, thanks. He almost trusted me. Me, the one who saved his sorry ass after, as I later found out, he screwed up with the _mafia_. The one giving him a place to stay. The one who quit his job (not that it was marvelous, but still) to assist on a suicide mission. I was his roomate for two years, and he almost trusts me. What a friend. I'm honored.

Honors aside, it still remains that friends don't give friends mixed signals. Friends, straight, strictly platonic. Oh, I heard him, but did he? It's lucky for the both of us that I listen to what Mello means and not what he says. Between the picture painted by the bullshit coming out of his mouth and his actions, which pretty much spoke (and continue to speak) for themselves, I was getting two distinctly different impressions. Let me repeat that for emphasis: distinctly different.

Mello gave a little shrug and shifted his stance, wriggling his fingers into the front pocket of excruciatingly clingy leather pants. I don't know how he justified them in his mind; there was no way he could pass those off as motorcycle leathers. He knows I'm interested. He knows those pants do terribly incredible things for his figure. I refuse to believe Mello has the self restraint to turn a blind eye to me checking him out. Unless he's honestly oblivious to it, and I refuse to believe that either. He'd just made it clear he has no faith in my own capabilities, so Mello definitely didn't think I could help myself from looking.

I looked into those blue eyes smouldering like a bad cliche out of a cheap romance novel. There was no way that was an unconscious effort. Was it some kind of practical joke? I bet he was laughing at me in his mind. _Aw, look at how upset Matt is. _I could just see it. Mello might be painfully gorgeous, but there are still times I'd love to punch his face in.

"Matt? Are you going to say something?"

"You can be a real asshole, Mel, you know that?"

He smirked. "So I've been told."

"Then nope. Nothing to say," I muttered, and backed away. Mello eyed me curiously. "What? Want to assert your unassailable heterosexuality some more?"

I knew I was being immature. In fact, I was surprised I'd made it so far without being beaten to a bloody pulp. Mello sighed, and flopped back down on the futon. I wanted to kick him. I wanted to grab a mirror and hold it to his face and scream "Look at the way you look at me! Look at that! Are you blind? Do you see yourself?" until he either stopped it, or admitted to himself that he makes bedroom eyes at me _all_ the fucking _time_. Preferably the latter.

I shuffled off to the kitchen to make myself some coffee.

"Hey Matt?" Mello called out, from the living room.

I ripped out a new filter and stuffed it in the machine. Measured in the grinds. "Yeah."

"You're not mad at me, are you?"

Hah, hah. "No more so than usual."

"Kay." Apparently satisfied, Mello had no further questions. Good. Fuck him. He wouldn't get any coffee.

Oh. Mello doesn't drink coffee.

Well, fuck him anyway.


End file.
